The last people to leave Riverside Church at midnight were always the homeless men and women who sat for hours on wooden pews in the hallway to escape the frigid air. They were also the first to return at 6 a.m. when the doors reopened.
So the church, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, converted part of its gym into a refuge for those who had nowhere else to go, as part of a New York City-financed expansion of housing for homeless people. Beginning last month, the 10 folding beds with pillows and blankets have filled nightly with regulars like Andre Fields, 55, who used to ride the bus to La Guardia Airport to sleep in the terminal waiting areas. “I can go get in my bed now,” said Mr. Fields, who has been homeless since 2012. “I couldn’t say that before.”
Mr. Fields has been among those known as the “unsheltered homeless,” a relatively small subset of New York City’s homeless population, but a segment often deemed most at risk of serious injury. Although the numbers of unsheltered homeless people can be hard to estimate, homeless advocates say their population is increasing. While city officials maintain that the number has remained relatively stable for the past few years — hovering at just over 3,000 — the city’s Department of Homeless Services will devote more resources to unsheltered homeless people this year, allocating more than $45 million in city and state funds, up from $35.5 million the year before.
[For more of this story, written by Winnie Hu, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02...rd-to-help.html?_r=0]
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